The main focus in building and designing a successful race car is making it aerodynamically efficient. However, at the same time, the car must be versatile, durable, safe, and most important, fast. The challenge for the design team is to create car that can race on any type of track, weather it be on tight corners or long straight-aways. The aerodynamics of the race car is multi-functional. The first purpose is to make it as streamline as possible. The second purpose is to provide downforce for the race vehicle. The last reason is to control the airflow over the car’s body.
Streamlining a vehicle means reducing the drag of the vehicle traveling through the air. This is done two ways: one is making the surfaces in contact with the air as smooth as possible. The second way is decreasing the size of the car. This is due to the fact that DRAG = ½DρAυ²; where D is a drag coefficient (which is dependent on the smoothness of the material), ρ is the density of air, υ is the velocity traveling through the air, and A is the cross-sectional area of the vehicle. By reducing the cross-sectional area of the vehicle, vehicles can have less drag and in turn drive
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This is the result of Bernoulli’s effect. Bernoulli’s effect explains how fluids, in this case the air, will react when traveling over the wing surface. Lift occurs due to a difference in pressures on opposite sides of airfoils caused by this effect. The wings on race cars are essentially wings flipped upside-down so that the lifting force is directed in a downward direction. This is downforce.
The theory behind creating downforce is to increase the force the vehicle has on the ground. This in turn will increase the traction of the tires, enabling the race cars to make sharp corners at higher speeds. Most race cars create so much downforce that at speeds greater than 100 mph they have enough downforce that they could drive on a road that was up-side
The green flag drops on the first race in The National Dirt Racing Association(NDRA). It doesn’t matter where people go, on some little road in a small town, people will find a small dirt track. The speedways are mostly always located in city areas where a large amount of people live. After a weekend of racing the teams head to the shop to fix the car up again. Despite the fact, that racing had been around since before 1978; whenever Mr. Robert Smawley introduced NDRA, and later Mr. Bill France introduced NASCAR, more people paid attention to the sport of racing.
The word demolition means collisions and hitting two objects together while derby mean a race. These two words put together creates a competitive place for people to enjoy derby cars. Demolition derby drivers come from long family history of drivers. The pasion starts when they are old enough to walk, helping dad at the garage. He can remember their first demolition derby going forty miles per hour, smashing into another car and coming in third. From that moment on, he was hooked. From my experience and research, I know there is a lot of time and effort that goes into building the car, participating in the demo derby, and keeping a driver and spectators safe and these are the three areas of focus on in this paper.
The piston is pushed upward by the flywheel's momentum, compressing the air/fuel mix. 3. Combustion: As the piston reaches the top of its stroke or TDC, the spark plug fires, igniting the mixture. Due to the high compression of this mixture, it is very volatile and it explodes when the spark is introduced. This pushes the piston downward and produces power.
Take a look at your car, it probably can only hit eighty on a good day. Then watch the top fuel and funny car dragsters of the National Hot Rod Association who get three hundred miles per hour on a bad day. You would be blown away at the diffrence in power. The pure power and the amount of noise that these cars produce will blow you away. I'm going to inform you on a lot of the amazing facts about the nitro powered dragsters of the NHRA. First, i'm going to inform you on how drag racing started and on how drag racing works, then how the dragsters work. Following that i'm going to explain how the equipment keeps the drivers and workers safe, finally I will explain how the sport is evolving,
There are many different kinds of vehicles on the road, but the ones that stand out the most are muscle cars and sports cars. Their unique design and body styles will catch people’s attention wherever they go. The Ford Mustang, a high performing muscle car introduced in 1964, is the most notable muscle car on the streets. It is most known for its unique body design with a long hood and short, rear decks. Their high performing V8 engines make their exhausts have a really deep, loud growl. When you think of sports cars, the first that comes to mind is the Chevrolet Corvette. Its sleek body style paired with its ability to stick to the ground around corners, makes it a very notable sports car in America. The two most iconic versions of these
These cars operate from a rechargeable battery and gasoline. The engines are smaller so that they will be able to accommodate the 99% of time when the car is not going uphill or accelerating quickly. The battery is used to give extra acceleration power if needed. When the car is stopped, hybrid gasoline motors can shut off and run off their electric motor and battery. These cars are aerodynamic and the tires are often stiffer and inflated higher to reduce dragging.
Statistic Brain website. (Jan 1, 2014). NASCAR Racing Statistics. Retrieve for this paper Mar 21, 2014 from,http://www.statisticbrain.com/nascar-racing-statistics/
All flight is the result of forces acting upon the wings of an airplane that allow it to counteract gravity. Contrary to popular belief, the Bernoulli principle is not responsible for most of the lift generated by an airplanes wings. Rather, the lift is created by air being deflected off the wings and transferring an upward force to those wings.
This paper is a look at the physics behind car racing. We look look at how we can use physics to select tires, how physics can help predict how much traction we will have, how physics helps modern cars get there extreme speed, how physics lets us predict the power of an engine, and how physics can even help the driver find the quickest way around the track.
In conclusion it can be seen that lift is derived from the fact that for there to exist a lifting force created in the wings the wings must exert a force on the air around them. The wings are able to do this due to the viscosity of air and the Coanda effect. By manipulating the wing's curves and angle of attack a pilot may preform great stunts and feats not possible if lift were to be explained through other incorect models.
Wings create lift for the upward force of an airplane. A great example of how this happens is sticking your hand out of a car window driving down the freeway. The force on your flat palm causes a force that can lift your hand up or down by changing the
In my undergraduate years, I have acquired a strong background in the fundamentals of basic mechanical engineering, having studied subjects such as Strength of Materials, Thermodynamics, Fluid Mechanics, Heat and Mass Transfer, Design of Machine Elements and Automobile Engineering. Whilst pursuing my diploma & degree courses, my interest for Automotive Engineering grew even more having learnt more on the different types of internal combustion engines, their configuration and importance. However, what I lacked was a practical understanding on these core areas of Automotive Engineering. To gain a better understandi...
The basic concepts of lift for an airplane is seen. The air that is flowing splits to move around a wing. The air that that moves over the wing speeds up creating lower pressure which means that the higher pressure from the air moving slower under the wing pushes up trying to equalize the pressure. The lift generated can be affected by the angle at which the wing is moving into the flowing air. The more surface area of the wing resisting against the flow of air can either generate lift or make the plane dive. This can be easily simulated in everday life. Next time you are riding in a car with someone stick your hand out the window. Have your fingers pointing in the direction of the motion of the vehicle. Now move your hand up and down slightly. You can feel the lift and drag that your hand creates.
In order to have a fast and efficient car all these things I have discussed need to be taken into consideration. A fast car should be designed with aerodynamic surfaces for a balance of maximum production of downforce and minimum drag creating surfaces. It should have as small an engine as possible to reduce mass and reduce the necessary size of the frontal area, but a large enough engine to be able to produce enough horsepower to be able to create more force than the resistance the car faces to accelerate and enough to balance with those forces at high speeds. The tires should be wide enough for fast acceleration and good cornering but not so wide it creates large amounts of rolling resistance. Your overall best example of such a car would be formula one races or Indy cars because they have to have good handling, fast acceleration and reach and maintain high speeds.
Even when cars capable of these speeds are put into the hands of world-class drivers such as Ferrari’s Michael Shumacher and McLaren’s Mika Hakkinen, mishaps are bound to occur. This is what makes this sport so exciting to watch. Crashes however, are not the only exciting events of the race. It is thrilling to watch a car out brake another in order to squeeze its way ahead, or to watch the cars bump tires in an effort to occupy the same piece of race track to be set up correctly for the turn ahead. Other points of interest are the pit stops and the strategies that the various teams use in order to make a fast pit stop.